Careless in Red (Inspector Lynley, #15)(207)

“That’s Jago Reeth? Santo spoke about him. The old surfer working for Madlyn’s dad. Santo quite liked him. I’d no idea. No. I’ve not met him.”

“I doubt he’s actually a surfer although he talks the talk. He doesn’t look familiar to you?”

“Should he?”

“As Jonathan Parsons, perhaps.”

Ben Kerne’s lip parted, but he said nothing. He watched Reeth trudging towards the kissing gate. “Where’s he going?” he asked.

“Where he’s willing to talk. To us and to you.” Bea put her hand on Kerne’s arm. “But you’ve no need to listen. You’ve no need to follow him. His condition to speak to us was to have you present and I realise this is half mad and the other half dangerous. But he’s got us?that’s the cops and not you?by the short and curlies and the only way we’re going to get a word from him is to play it his way for now.”

“On the phone, you didn’t say Parsons.”

“I didn’t want you driving here like a madman. And I don’t want you like a madman now. We already have one on our hands, I believe, and two would be overwhelming. Mr. Kerne, I can’t tell you how far out on a limb we are with this entire approach so I won’t even go into it. Are you able to listen to what he has to say? More, are you willing?”

“Did he…?” Kerne seemed to search for a way to put it that wouldn’t make what he had to say into a fact he might have to accept. “Did he kill Santo?”

“That’s what we’re going to talk to him about. Are you able?”

He nodded. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his windcheater and indicated with a tilt of his head that he was ready. They set out towards the kissing gate.

On the other side of this gate, a field provided grazing for cows, and the way towards the sea edged along a barbed-wire fence. The path they walked on was muddy and uneven, marked deeply by ruts made from a tractor’s wheels. At the far end of the field lay another field, fenced off from the first by more barbed wire and accessed through yet another kissing gate. Ultimately, they walked perhaps half a mile or more and their destination was the South-West Coast Path, which crossed the second field high above the sea.

The wind was fierce here, coming onshore in continuous gusts. On these, the seabirds rose and fell. Kittiwakes called. Herring gulls replied. A lone green cormorant shot up from the cliff side as up ahead Jago Reeth approached the edge. The bird dove down, rose, and began to circle. Looking for prey, Bea thought, in the turbulent water.

They headed south on the coastal path, but within some twenty yards, a break in the gorse that stood between the path and perdition indicated a set of steep stone stairs. This, Bea saw, was their destination. Jago Reeth disappeared down them.

She said to her companions, “Hang on, then,” and she went to see where the stone steps led. She was reckoning they were a means to get to the beach, which lay some two hundred feet below the cliff top, and she intended to tell Jago Reeth that she had no intention of putting her life, Havers’s life, and Ben Kerne’s life at risk by following him down some perilous route to the water. But she found the steps went down only as far as fifteen of them could descend, and they terminated in another path, this one narrow and heavily grown on each side with gorse and sedge. It, too, headed south but for no great distance. Its conclusion was an ancient hut built partially into the face of the cliff that backed it. Jago Reeth, she saw, had just reached the hut’s doorway and swung it open. He saw her on the steps but made no further gesture. Their eyes met briefly before he ducked inside the old structure.

She returned to the top of the cliff. She spoke above the sound of the wind, the sea, and the gulls. “He’s just below, in the hut. He might well have something stowed inside, so I’m going in first. You can wait on the path, but don’t come near till I give you the word.”

She went down the steps and along the path, the gorse brushing against the legs of her trousers. She reached the hut and found that Jago had indeed prepared for this moment. Not with weapons, however. Either he or someone else had earlier supplied the hut with a spirit stove, a jug of water, and a small box of supplies. The man was, incredibly, brewing tea.

The hut was fashioned from the driftwood of wrecked ships, of which there had been countless numbers over the centuries. It was a small affair, with a bench that ran round three sides and an uneven stone floor. As long as it had been in this place, people had carved their initials into its walls, so they had the appearance now of a wooden Rosetta stone, this one immediately comprehensible and speaking both of lovers and of people whose internal insignificance made them seek an outward expression?any outward expression?that would give their existence meaning.

Bea told Reeth to step away from the spirit stove, which he did willingly enough. She checked it and the rest of his supplies, of which there were few enough: plastic cups, sugar, tea, powdered milk in sachets, one spoon for shared stirring. She was surprised the old man hadn’t thought of crumpets.

She ducked back out of the door and motioned Havers and Ben Kerne to join her. Once all four of them were inside the hut, there was barely room to move, but Jago Reeth still managed to make the tea, and he pressed a cup upon each of them, like the hostess of an Edwardian house party. Then he doused the flame on the stove and set the stove itself on the stones beneath the bench, perhaps as a way of reassuring them that he had no intention of using it as a weapon. At this, Bea decided to pat him down again for good measure. Having put the spirit stove in the hut in advance of their arrival, there was no telling what else he’d stowed in the place. But he was weaponless, as before.